Tag Archives: identification

Audiences listen to speakers for three reasons, according to Aristotle (qtd. in Burke): to hear advice about the future, to pass judgment on a past action, or simply for the sake of interest in a subject. And yet, Ratcliffe observes that Aristotle didn’t explain HOW to listen (p. 20). Now, how do these audience rationales weave their way into technical writing discourse? Or, as Dr. Lewis asked in class, how could technical writing be taught with rhetorical listening as a goal? My limited experience has me somewhat stymied as to how this question can be fully answered. We discuss traditional notions of rhetoric (audience, ethos, etc.), but I had not considered gender or race as having a strong presence in the technical writing curriculum. Nevertheless, I typed “gender technical writing” in a search bar on my Internet browser and found this list of works pertaining to using nonsexist language:

Nilsen, Alleen Pace. “Winning the Great He/She Battle.” College English 46 (1984): 151-157)

Unfortunately, I do not have time to peruse all of these sources, but the gist of the idea is that writers should make an effort to not assume (not disidentify?) gendership of the reader. Author Jenny R. Redfern notes that “replacing every he with he or she attracts even more attention to gender and defeats your purpose. This predicament merits special attention in scientific and technical writing, where any ambiguity is unacceptable,” (http://www.rpi.edu/web/writingcenter/genderfair.html).

I think Ms. Redfern’s advice may apply Ratcliffe’s techniques outlined on p. 26: promoting understanding of self and other; proceeding within an accountability logic; locating identifications across commonalities and differences; and analyzing claims as well as the cultural logics within these claims function. The proposal and formal report assignments can benefit from these techniques, as discussed below, but along the way to research, I came across this course description: “Race, Class, and Gender in the Professional Workplace” an advanced composition course taught by Dr. Engles at Eastern Illinois University in 2006. If only I had his syllabi!

Pedagogically, the aim to discuss race, class and gender in the workplace sounds like an ideal, lofty goal, similar to Ratcliffe’s goal of listening rhetorically, and I am intrigued by her question on p. 53, How may scholar/teachers in rhetoric and composition studies navigate the modern/postmodern divide so as to theorize reformist concepts of identification, disidentification, and non-identification as places for rhetorical listening? One way would be to embrace Burke’s notion of identification, that of persuading [a man] by identifying your ways with his (p. 55). Another would be to introduce the above arguments for bypassing gendered writing (technical writing privileges objectivity, after all).

This leads me to our ENGL3323 assignments for writing an internal proposal and the consequent external (or formal) report. This is a collaborative assignment. Relentlessly, I tell my students to invoke a shared context to set the stage for optimum results ~ in fact, they are using their available means of persuasion (Aristotle) to identify with a decision-maker’s ways (Burke). This is where Burke’s argument for consubstantiality shows up: If we truly want to understand each other, we need to express or assume some shared experience or values (p. 20).

In the internal proposal assignment, my students are encouraged to use this identification by writing sentences to the decision-maker that indicate a mutual desire or outcome: improvements, eliminations, assessments and so on. Perhaps this addresses Ratcliffe’s statement that consubstantiality “signifies a place of bridged differences and common ground, a place form which to act for common cause,” (p. 55). The differences in the proposal can be found in many of my students’ initial introductions (“OSU has a problem because not all professors use D2L” or “ABC company should initiate this program to eliminate its current problems”). The writers do not understand that a shared context can pave the way to better communication. After we discuss what a shared context means, students rewrite their comments to reflect their perceptions of the reader. Not ideal, as we know, but a starting point for increasing awareness about other people’s feelings, knowledge and attitudes. Some proposals involve politics (city ordinances, civic clubs) while others advocate for awareness (campaigns for the public or for OSU students); any type of proposal benefits from writers realizing that the “key rhetorical process through which poets and ordinary people attempt to persuade others,” (p. 55) is identification. Perhaps the collaboration of the teams of three could be asked to write various versions of a shared context, based on their understanding of what commonalities and differences they may share with their decision-maker/reader.

Now, I insert a part of Steve Pederson’s post because I cannot say it any better (without his permission due to the hour, and my shaking from the earthquake while I am writing):

“In traditional Aristotelian rhetoric, persuasion is the goal. This poses a very one-to-one dynamic, where the speaker persuades an audience.

Audience Analysis

In Burke’s re-evaluation of Aristotelian rhetoric, he presents a theory of identification that complicates this simple one-to-one dynamic, highlighting the symbolic and non-symbolic forms of communication based in identifications (which precedes persuasion). In this way, the identification that exists between the speaker and the audience creates (in an idealized sense) a symbolic realm of shared space (aka “consubstantiality”).”

I submit that “shared space” could be “shared context.” Now my challenge is to further develop a lesson plan or perhaps guidelines that will help technical writing students become aware of their differences in knowledge and their assumptions about their audiences so that they will incorporate rhetorical listening into their written texts. Does anyone have $64.00?

In the interests of multimedia textual enhancement, I will begin this week’s post with a short video clip from the 1993 film Gettysburg, which is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara.

Every time I watch this scene, it feels a bit like I am watching a discussion between my ego and my superego. On one hand, we have Col. Chamberlain, an idealist who believes in a Divinely-implanted equality. On the other hand, we have Buster Kilrain, the pragmatist, who contends that no “magnificent equality” exists between men/women, that the notion of basic human goodness is simply an ideal not grounded in practical reality. Love for your fellow man/woman is clearly not an inherent, universal truth when you stop and pay attention to humanity in action. “Where have you seen this Divine spark in operation? Where have you noted this magnificent equality?” he asks. In his mind, we are left with a dichotomy between what the human condition is and what we would like it to be?

But it’s Buster’s final comment that I really want to point to here: “There’s only one aristocracy, and that is right here (as he points to his temple).” What does he actually mean by this? Truth is mind-dependent? Such an interpretation would make sense in this context, I think, as the philosophical mind-dependent versus mind-independent truth debate seems to fit into this dichotomy. Also, it seems safe to infer from the context here that we are talking about moral truths, specifically. Is morality something that is inherent in us all? Is it the substance of a metaphysical reality that exists independent of cognitive thinking? Or is morality a construct of the human mind? Some social scientists, such as Karl Mannheim, have suggested that the mind’s power over our morality is the source of our free will.

I gathered from Burke’s “Rhetoric of ‘Address’ (to the Individual Soul)”, especially from pages 37– 39, that each individual is constantly moving through an internal, “moralizing process” within himself/herself, and this process occurs as part of one’s “socialization” in the realm of external experiences. (I am looking specifically at the first full paragraph on page 39.) The process works like this: We gather information from the external world, and then wash that data through our inner consciousness for processing. It’s in this processing stage that the “I” and the “me” debate one another, using rhetoric, of course. At the conclusion of such debate, what comes back out, through various forms of communication, is our own, individual brand of moral reasoning.

If we embody Buster Kilrain’s pragmatist perspective for a moment and look around, I don’t think it’s difficult to see evidence of our innermost moral struggles. All around us there are politically-relative “moral” debates taking place – abortion, capital punishment, war, drugs, sex. In these we find debates over what constitutes morally-sound judgement. Some believe the act of killing in the context of war is moral if it’s in the name of saving lives. Some believe that sex is only moral inside of a marriage, while others believe sex is moral as long as it involves two consenting adults. Are certain drugs illegal because they are immoral, or are they immoral because they are illegal? Is personal drugs use moral in the context of one’s rightful control over his/her own body?

In the end, all I know is what goes on in my own mind. I know that I’ve been my own audience on many, many occasions, and I can honestly say that my own thoughts are rhetorical … which is kind of a scary thought, in my opinion.

Are morals constructs of the mind … that gain validity with social acceptance? Thus, is morality rhetorically constructed intersubjectively? Is morality fundamentally rhetorical?